Das Photophile in mir: "Tell me baby what's your story ..."

From south to north and there she was. The damn cat (a.k.a me) arrived in a small village in the far north of Denmark. The host family : two ceramic artist Gregory and Janne ( click on link for more about their work ) and their kids as well as some other woofers. I chose this family because it was already always interesting for me to work with clay – but I never really had the chance to work with it for a longer time and even less to fire it !

The same night two other ceramic artist arrived ( who I think made my stay very different than expected- in a positive way ) . The great Ryan LaBar and Master Lars Calmar. Both of them very humorous and very talented guys. Sitting next to them and watching them work in the evenings I could not resist to make some pieces out of clay on my own. L. and R. were simply too inspiring to me.

I spend one month in the small village of Tolne before heading south-east. A month of joy, funny evenings , the “hard task” - to pick one of the hundreds of different cups for the morning coffee ;) , good & badly stressful moments, doubts …but also a lot of happiness about doing all that kind of experience that no one can take from me.

To sum it up I thought of the most interesting feeling or moment for me in that month.
Besides the moment when I didn't have a place to stay in Aarhus and just talked to somebody on the street at 10 o´clock at night whether they could host me ( and they could ! Thanks Nadege and Gosia :) ) it was the feeling of creating something ,not knowing what it will look like. Usually when you draw or make a photo or work with clay , you know what you want it or rather how it´s going to look like.
But 1^st ) some of my pieces were not planed at all . I discovered that I see a figure in the clay mixture I´m kneading so I stopped kneading and worked on the “figure”.
2^nd) You don’t know how your work will look like if you fire it in a salted-wood- firing . So the moment I took my small clay pieces out of the big kiln was new and amazing to me. “She felt like the discoverer of the grave of Tutankhamun who was the first one to enter his sepulcher…” Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain

Thanks to everybody again for the great time - Woofers, Artists , Hosts and ... Chickens !